Royal families get shot of red blood

AMSTERDAM — Around Europe, the talk at the palace dinner table may sound different these days, the vowels not quite so round and “cultured.” You might even hear an Australian twang or a Latin American lilt.

And the conversation may be utterly ordinary.

The blue blood of Europe’s royal families is increasingly diluted by the common red variety. Unthinkable before the social upheaval of the world wars of the past century, it is now more frequent than not for royalty to marry commoners.

It’s a sign of changing times in society’s upper crust.

In the days when kings not only reigned but ruled, the palace arranged the marriages of children to seal a political alliance or to shore up the family’s blood line. Domestic satisfactions were resolved through the unofficial institution of the royal mistress.

But now that politics is constitutionally separated from the palace, love is allowed to triumph over duty.

Denmark and Spain last month were the latest to witness the weddings of their crown princes — the future kings of their ancient monarchies — to commoners.

On May 14, Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark, scion of Europe’s oldest royal house, wed Mary Donaldson, a law-trained businesswoman from Australia.

In Madrid on May 22, Crown Prince Filipe of the Royal House of Bourbon married Letizia Ortiz, a former TV anchorwoman.

They join the list of princes — among them Norwegian and Dutch — who forswore the search for aristocratic matches, found their brides in the ranks of the people, and married them without having to renounce their claim to the throne.

“I can’t predict whether these marriages will work out. But they are breathtakingly different from anything that happened in the past,” said Harold Brooks-Baker, publishing director of Burke’s Peerage in London, one of the bibles of aristocratic lineages.

Mr. Brooks-Baker thought some of the choices of brides were “strange.”

“Most of these people don’t belong to the aristocratic class, or even to upper-middle-class families. Some are from very obscure backgrounds, and some have controversial pasts,” he said.

The aristocratic crowd may sniff at the new royals, but the young women are popular with the people, and in some cases have thrown open the windows of stuffy old palaces.

Princess Maxima of the Netherlands, the former Maxima Zorreguieta of Argentina — beautiful, vivacious, intelligent — has aroused unaccustomed public enthusiasm for the House of Orange since her 2002 wedding to Willem-Alexander, overcoming the Dutch public’s initial skepticism.

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